I’m feeling a real positive energy and community spirit as a result of the sudden fragmentation of reddit’s foundational use base.
And I love how chaotic it is! How there is so much to learn. How each new platform is separate yet somehow meshed in a way that will only become clear with time. I love the performance issues, even – just because it feels new, like something exciting is happening.
It reminds me of what the net used to be like before everything became just variations of a single beige blob. Reddit’s frontpage was essentially churn. There was value in its smaller subs, but after over a decade of use, everything became all too familiar. And looking back, I preferred reddit way more before they changed the up/downvote counter. But that’s all in the rear view mirror now.
We’re all participating in a huge shift, and it won’t be the familiar, convenient, linear path we’ve all become accustomed to. And I love everybody’s optimism and willingness to pitch in to build a better web for future generations.
Loving how raw this all feels too.
Even if all this ends up being a niche thing, I’ll still get my social fix with likeminded randoms on the internet, hopefully with less doomscroll.
I’ve certainly been more interested in commenting here vs Reddit, just because it seems far less toxic, the slight wrong thing posted on Reddit and the pile on was a real danger.
Seeing many, many posts where simple questions were asked by newcomers seeking help with the obligatory blind downvote is awful for newbies.
Interested to see where all of this leads to and very appreciative of what Earnest has achieved.
It might be rough but I’m sure ready.
I showed up to the fediverse last September (had tours around years ago but never stayed). Generally speaking, the fediverse is a very chill and accepting place as long as you’re not a dick, and stay respectful of others. It really does remind me of the web in the old days before we handed over control to like 5 companies.
I encourage you to explore beyond this one corner when you feel ready. Maybe none of the rest of it will interest you, maybe it will. But it’s a cool thing we’re building!
And shadow bans/karma limits. Had engagement actively stifled so many times from being unable to submit or those submissions being hidden.
Here, I make an account and I’m in here sharing the awe with everyone else. Simple as.It took me a while to realise I was shadowbanned from a specific subreddit, which I was really bummed about because I’d never done anything to warrant this and it seemed like a really good community otherwise. It really limited my engagement with Reddit after that, because why bother if it’s just hidden.
I’m looking forward to seeing new communities grow here and to be a part of them.
Was a bit of a poweruser on Reddit for a bit, and yeah, commented less and less due to the growing toxicity. Here feels more like Reddit from years back - A more hopeful, friendly atmosphere where you can just post rather than think over your post, post, then delete it because, “Wait what if the hivemind buries it?”
I started my reddit main account in 2011. I used to be a highly active mod for a niche sub for about a year between 2012-2013, before bots were widespread to help moderate. But then from like 2014-2020, the number of times where I would start typing up a response for a default sub, then just deleted it all out of fear of the dogpiling eventually just drove me to being a lurker and very passively consuming content. In 2020, I finally started a new hobby and the became engaged and active with submitting new content and contributing some comments.
I already feel so much more empowered to engage here. This actually quite civil and highly cerebral culture really gives me the nostalgia for when I first started on reddit. I have questions though for what will eventually happen with the toxics and deplorables find a home here just to ruin it for everyone else.
One of the things that bugged me the most about Reddit was how it felt like everyone was constantly engaged in this game of one-upsmanship to try and seem like they’re the smartest but also the most cynical. I don’t get that vibe here at all and it’s really exciting.
Sometimes people can just be pointlessly combative. I remember I was asking for help fixing some stuff on my bike, and some guy was like “do you REALLY need to maintain your bike that much?” and it was just like… Well, I don’t necessarily do this stuff often… But I do have to do it right now. So. Help or fuck off??
Either that or trying to be the first one to post the same meme reply to the same meme repost you’ve seen for the millionth time.
-Hey, what’s a huge red flag on a first date?(nsfw)
-(oh oh!!! I know!!!) Being a dick to servers
_____-And retail workers
__________-thisUgh people just commenting “this” to every top comment and getting upvoted like crazy drove me batty. It doesn’t add to the conversation and anytime I mentioned it on Reddit I’d get 100 people just replying “this” underneath… Hoping that one track mentality can be different here. It’s one thing to have it happen once, but for it to be every single time someone brings it up is kinda a drag. Like ya hur dur we get it, but it gets old fast.
this
Sigh and it begins…
Yeah. I kinda get it. It is a red flag and an obvious and agreeable answer. But oh jeeze it’s so boring when every question even remotely along the same lines gets the same replies. I know there’s always gonna be some people who are seeing it for the first time and that’s okay, but there’s kinda like a race to get to post that reply that will always get upvoted a ton even if it’s not original or interesting.
One thing that’s kinda depressing is how many Reddit threads would have some quippy pun as the top comment, then a few comments down might be some super insightful, interesting, and original comment. But it’s not as easily digestible as a one line pun, so it isn’t considered the best.
Recently I couldn’t get a single piece of information out of reddit. Whatever the message was, it was buried under a load of one-liners overused jokes. I spent more time hiding one-liners rather than reading anything useful. There are the specialized subs of course, but most of the tool is just noise. And you can feel that the posts are not genuine, it’s so annoying.
Some subs celebrated the fact that they’ve reach a milestone in term of subscriptions (2 millions subs, wooo!). Well, seems like there is a thing called oversubscriptions. Yep.
This is SUCH a good post. I love the energy of embracing the new, even with its inconveniences, and perhaps especially with them.
I’ve felt for years that this drive for convenience at any cost not only helps create bland societies and exacerbate environmental and economic destruction, but it also makes each of us that much less adaptable every year.
I’m weak as fuck, but I still believe there is essential value to be had in some discomfort and inconvenience on a somewhat regular basis, and this also goes for community-building, which I feel very fortunate to be witnessing in real-time.
It didn’t sink in until reading your words, but, yeah, 100% agree. It gives me the good vibes tingle thinking about being in the thick of a possible move from stagnation into something new and exciting for internet communities.
I’ve been on reddit for more than a decade and it was my social network. Not FB, not IG, not Twitter. I must have visited almost daily and I learned about so many thing that I would have not come across otherwise.
What’s happening there right now is more than sad but I’m definitely feeling the excitement of a fresh start. Consuming less and contributing more, checking out magazines that I have never hear of before and mainly helping to build a new community.
Thank you for the warm welcome here!
Consuming less and contributing more, checking out magazines that I have never hear of before and mainly helping to build a new community.
Keep that positive attitude! That’s exactly what we need here. This is a new world that we’re building, let’s make it a good one!
Hear hear!
I never really contributed much to reddit, as usually you had the people that perpetually watched twitter / news sources / new reddit posts getting in first, to the point where there wasn’t a whole lot of point getting involved outside of voting, because someone else has already said whatever you were about to.
Here though, I’m itching to contribute and get the ball rolling on magazines. Just a shame the performance issues are hampering that, haha!The performance issues will sort themselves out. The timing is just bad for kbin.social
But it’s not a performance issue, so much as it is people learning how the Fediverse works. At it’s best, there shouldn’t be any megaservers where everybody is signed up. There should be many smaller servers, that are interacting with each other, via federation. It’s a little different way of looking at things.
Sounds like people are looking into it e.g. https://mastodonapp.uk/@wild1145/110532540808254216 (wild1145 already runs mastodonapp.uk)
The only reason I haven’t gotten an instance spun up yet, is because I’m old, and set in my ways, and don’t really understand how to configure and get kbin running with Docker. As soon as somebody that’s better at this than I am gets some sort of “Docker for dummies wanting to setup kbin” up, I’ll spin it up, I’ve already got a nice beefy VPS sitting there with Mastodon/Matrix/Nextcloud running on it, and plenty of resources left.
Me too, I think reddit is going to keep enough bootlickers to stay running but I hope the fragmentation will result in a better and more interesting internet. Anyone here old enough to remember the days of TOTSE?
For my part, I’ve only participated in the whole reddit thing under protest. I’m involved in some open source projects, and I felt it necessary to get involved there, just to fight the FUD.
I never liked it. Even before this whole API hullabaloo.
I’ve got my popcorn, and I’ll be happy to watch reddit die in a fire. (One can only hope.)
It won’t die, it will just become lots of cats videos and girls in bikinis doing hoola hoop, like a TikTok clone. Or maybe it’ll turn full Voat and descend down into a fire pit of far-right racists fascists.
They’re welcome to it. I haven’t deleted my reddit account yet, but I did kill the tab in my browser. I just don’t care anymore.
